
378 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
In Vol. I, No. 7, p. 848, is a aaa er article on the Encamp — 
ment of the Herons. As the writer differs in some particulars from my 
observations, I will give my experience. ee has been an encampment 
of herons some sixteen miles from my office for many years, probably 
= and perhaps one hundred. It has been there as long as any onere 
e a ve been in the habit of visiting it fornearly 
jens years. The tract on which they nest consists of very tall, slim 
trees, from sixty to il feet high, running up from thirty to fifty feet 
without a limb, and covering over a belt of ground one and a half miles i 
length by one-half mile in breadth. Before visiting the ground I seat 
there for two years in ogre offerin ip a liberal reward to any on 


om í 
were in very wet ground, and in asi aan to climb, and arya 
ered with the excrements of the birds. I was telling a sailor of my ins- 
bility to get any one to climb the trees, when he roguishly inquired “if 

the ape were made of wood,” remarking that ‘he could climb any tree 
made o a. The i day found us in the swamp, and such asightl 
never b saw. The woods were filled with the Quawks (Nyctiardt AE 
Gardenii) ; pom were thousands, and their noise was almost deafening | 
on being disturbed, or, as Wilson graphically describes it, «it would : 
t p oe e hun d Indians ps were 




we made a rough estimate of the distance climbed. ae 
ting down the boxes of eggs were all measured, we pries tell pees . 
curately the height of the nests. They varie owe rom fifty to eighty! = 
making an average of about sixty-five feet. of my collectors, Wi 
creepers, climbed over twenty trees, which, in seniii and 
would make over half a mile, und that, too, in a rain storm, as asl 
of night-herons. There must have been between two and th 
illed. This is the second heronry that I pees peek in the habit 
ing to replenish my odlogical collection from, and yet [ha 
nest differently, and lay a greater or less number of € ay 
circumstances. I have sometimes thought that the birds we 
lific near the seashore where food is procured n-such abu 
